Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. Some of you who follow me on social media might know that I've been fairly poorly recently. Thank you for all of your well wishes. This isn't a Substack where I'm going to discuss that illness (which I'm still in recovery from), but more so a Substack which starts to make me feel back in the room, and a little bit active again.
I always think with illness, there's that moment where you're not necessarily 'better', but you need to start doing 'normal' things in order to initiate getting 'better better'. I hope that makes sense, and you'll forgive my addiction to quote marks there.
Anyway, I wanted to put together a short Substack to discuss plants and their categories, and why we think we can only grow houseplants indoors, and why we think herbs can only be grown with other herbs, or why fruit plants like blueberry should be in the fruit garden, and couldn't possibly take up some space in the shrub border instead.
Let's open our minds a little, Chlorophytum (spider plants) make awesome summer basket plants with Calibrachoa (aka mini petunias), jazzy Sage cultivars like 'Icterina' could add fizz to a bedding display, and why not mix up cottage garden faves like Nepeta into some summer patio pots...
I learnt a lot about de-categorising plants during my first trips to Japan, where I was invited to teach container planting at the Barakura gardening school. However, when I arrived, it turned out I learnt more from them, as they were choosing plants from across the whole garden centre, without any concern about what 'category' the plants fitted into…
Yes, of course you need to consider it on a practical basis, but actually do containers need to look amazing for 8 months of the year, or are you happy to accept a good 8 weeks?? I have this constant battle in my head, and I cannot fathom how people spend so much money on a bunch of cut flowers, say £25, which then last just a week. Yet, they won't invest the same cost into a beautiful patio pot of plants which will last a lot longer, and could be planted into borders afterwards.
Well, at Barakura, they weren't following any rules, and this actually made everything a lot more imaginative. Because students weren't fussing about their containers having a specific longevity; they were creating (what we might call) installations. In essence, they were flower arranging with living plants. The only difference between actual floristry and this was the fact the plants still had their roots intact!
Yes, they were absolutely shoehorning toooo many plants into the containers, but if you take a shorter term view on it (à la it's a bouquet of flowers with roots), you can actually do what the hell you want. Furthermore, this doesn't have to be 'disposable gardening', as there's nothing to stop you using any of the fading plants in other containers or in the garden after their life in the main container comes to an end.
Either way, planting in this way gave me such freedom, and I bloody loved it.
Here's a few of the creations that we worked on at Barakura over the years…
So, how do you feel about these arrangements? Did they make you shudder, because they're not 'horticulturally accurate'? Or, can we just relax and have a little bit of fun with plants... roots and all??
One specific way I've been playing with these concepts at home is with houseplants, because after all a houseplant is not necessarily bred to be in the house. We seem to have got a little bit over serious with some of how we use plants and where, what is to stop us using some spider plants or tradescantia in our outdoor pots? I've been experimenting with all sorts, even streptocarpus with petunias; have a little peek at some of my creations below...
Please, dear reader, I'd love to hear what you think about mixing up categories of plants? And, how do you feel about over planting containers with plants, are you worried they won't support themselves, or need more watering, won't have space to grow? Perhaps you will enjoy them for such a short space of time that you don't even need to watch them grow. Who knows?! I'd love to hear your comments about these creations :))
I love these! I’m thinking a lot about pots at the moment and this is perfect inspiration. Thanks very much this was really interesting. I also hope you’re back at 100% soon.